While assembling the recipes for Dum Luk's Ordinary I came across this file. It is a sketch to begin a book. But which one? The synapses issue a stale fart and inquire if any whiskey might help? I give my best rendition of a deer in the headlights in response.
This being more a writer's scrap book, or doodlewerk, I take the liberty of offering to quote myself:
Caveat
Neither to inform nor instruct do I write. Rather I hope to share my
mediocrities, triumphs, and the failures that made them both
possible. This is a work of fiction. I have taken to heart the hoary
mantra of Advice to Writers:Write
only of what you know
For years I fulminated against this as a homicide of fancy leading at
best to mere journalism – and folk think me opinionated now! “Mere”,
of course, meant journalism in theory, Kipling’s “who, what,
where, when, why and how” purveyed by a neutral observer, not the
ill-kempt, own horn sounding, condescending verbiage of modern
infotainment (so little info and hardly more tainment, *sigh*). Life
has beaten into me at last that what makes a writer valuable is his
point of view – that is: the imagination through which the writer
conceives this world. First, last and in-between a writer must study
his own imagination. All that happens to him must be filtered,
reduced, transmogrified in the lens and alembic of that organ. What
emerges is mingled with dross. For a Shakespeare all is forgiven. The
rest of us take our chances in a frequently harsh, and sometimes
indulgent world, busy at telling its own story. Here you have not
one, but a double-barreled blast of my current effusion. If you like it you obviously are a
person of taste and discretion. If you cavil at the germ and quibble
at the dross, no doubt you are a person of discernment. Please don’t
tell me about the fault’s you find, I am already busy elsewhere.
Instead write your own book stating your own truth. If that
contradicts mine I promise I won’t bring it to your attention. If
in the process you discover that picking a quarrel with me is not so
important I will be pleased. You have been warned. Here goes.
"Double-barreled"? What was I thinking of?
... wanders off in a blue study
--ml
About three o'clock every afternoon a persistent question seems to present itself.
No matter how well answered yesterday, it returns day after day to pose a problem susceptible to a rich myriad of divergent solutions. How rich? Why as rich as my most vivid imagination yet admirably suitable to my meager purse. The solution may expand to fill all comers at a serendipitous meeting of old friends, or contract to suit the contents of the cupboard.
What might answer? Flanders and Swann sang a song that catches the thought:
We have a song here, more or less as a postscript, it's about something that's not really an animal, but it's certainly more than a mere vegetable. I am referring, of course, to that fantastic newly-discovered hybrid, the Wompom. ... You can do such a lot with a Wompom, You can use every part of it too. For work or for pleasure, It's a triumph, it's a treasure, Oh there's nothing that a Wompom cannot do.
Oh, the flesh in the heart of a Wompom Has the flavour of porterhouse steak. And its juice is a liquor That will get you higher quicker And you're still lit up next morning when you wake.
The answers have no known geographic limitation. They range from collations as simple as flour and water to the austere complexities of a jaded gourmet's palette wake-up regime. While masters strain and heave the veriest amateur may strike it lucky and carry off the prize. Or not. The point is: It fills. It satisfies. Brillat-Savarin beams.
The question is: What's for dinner?
My all purpose response is: Gorp.
So just what is 'gorp'?
Not so easy. Like a wompom it is so flexible as to evade precision. That lack of precision might be a key that you are on to it. A plain rare chop doesn't give you much room to dance. It either is or it isn't. But don't you dare claim to know the only true recipe for chili (Chile? Chilli? Chilly?). Fist fights seem inevitable in any crowd larger than two. Experts differ. Any peaceable discussion requires a definition of terms. By chili we often refer to a reddish soupy sauce containing beef and/or pork either ground coarsely or diced into ¼” to ½” pieces and spiced with capsicums in the form of chile powder(s) mixed with other herbs and spices. (Chili powder's a gorp to itself. See here or here for recipes to make chilli powder. But there are more variations on the recipe for chili powder than there are chiles.) How about cumin? (“Ewh! Armpits!” Says the rude child) Or cinnamon, cloves, cacao, or herbs such as marjoram, oregano or thyme. How hot do we spice it? Just the virtual thrill of cayenne or the blazing full out hell fire of Naga Vipers at 800,000 – 1,382,118 Scovilles.
A pot of chili usually contains meat and often onions. I was once served a bowl that contained a boot lace eyelet. No doubt it featured well aged, even tanned, beef. Muy auténtico. Possibly there are tomatoes and other vegetables. But, important distinction, do we include beans? No Texan would say yes. But if so, what sort of beans? The non-Texan part of the world makes other choices indulging in a plethora of legumes. Accompanied by: Rice? Cheese? Noodles?Various chopped vegetables – tomatoes, lettuce, scallions, peppers, olives, et al? Oyster crackers? Saltines? Chips – corn, tortilla or pita? Tortillas – flour or corn? Use mere dots? The table covering models? Or something in between-ish? Or corn bread? White or yellow or a mix including sweet corn? Serve it in a bowl? Or in wraps and sauce as a casserole? Or a stand alone 'handwich'? These are only a few of the changes cooks ring on this basic food. Every sort has its adherents proudly claiming the pinnacle of savor.
As Chili is claimed by the Southwest of North America, so any good gorp may be closely associated with a culture. Perhaps this association is more or less specious. No matter. Spaghetti is Italian – except the regions of Italy each do something completely different with their particular local pasta and sauce than most mid-westerners, as an instance, expect.
Dorothy made her spaghetti sauce from a pound of ground beef, with an onion, a rib or two of celery and a quarter of a green bell pepper diced fine . Add a can of button mushrooms, a small one of tomato paste, a tablespoon of oregano, the merest blessing of an ancient, consecrated clove of garlic, and a grind of pepper. Simmer for 20 minutes and serve.
How very different her modest restraint was from Earle's more complex chemistry experiment:
Dad's Spaghetti Sauce
Dice 4 slices of bacon, 3 ribs of celery and 4 onions.
Mince 6 cloves of garlic.
Sauté bacon slowly to render fat.
Brown 1½ pounds coarsely ground beef.
Add vegetables. Sauté about 5 minutes.
Add 4 cans consomme, 2 large cans tomato paste, (1 large can tomatoes), (⅓ cup dried shitake mushrooms), ⅓ cup oregano, 1 bunch parsley, 2 teaspoons salt, 1 tablespoon mustard, ½ teaspoon cloves, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, 1 tablespoon tarragon, 2 teaspoons celery seed.
Simmer at least 4 hours.
Thicken with 1½ tablespoons cornstarch per quart.
Let stand overnight. The flavors need time to blend. Freezes very well.
A third version is Strike Night Spaghetti.
Mix your favorite red sauce with a mess of cooked pasta (rotelli work very well with lots of crannies to hold the sauce) and fill an oblong baker. Bake to warm and cover with cheese (Mild cheddar, colby or co-jack). Brown that and serve.
This was a favorite with the crew about 1 am of a Sunday morning as we finished clearing out the set (usually two stories and free standing – that was built more like a house than a suit of flats) of the production that closed Saturday night so we could erect the set for the next play on Monday. We had to clear and clean the amphitheatre by 10 am Sunday for rehearsals. This was called striking the set, hence 'strike night spaghetti'.
At the Kirin Beer Hall in Shinjuku they made a wonderful spaghetti with a red sauce, featuring tiny mushrooms, which was vaguely Italian, but decidedly Japanese. What might you expect in an ersatz German Beer Hall? The beer was very good, too.
Yet all of these delicious red sauces are only part of saucing pasta. Sauces may be varied. With cream sauces. With fish sauces. The Italian Food page at All About dot com is a good jumping off point if you are unfamiliar with Italian cooking as Italians do it.
Gorp also results when two cultures meet. Chop suey, supposedly, was the result of Chinese in the US trying to please the tastes of European descendants working on the California end of the Transcontinental Railroad. And succeeding.
This is a myth, apparently. The late nineteenth century immigrants from Taishan in Guangdong Province were enterprising restauranteurs who offered a native za sui, or sub gum (sub gum, Cantonese: “numerous and varied”, means one or more meats or fish with mixed vegetables, Rice or noodles or soup, i.e.: gorp) stir fry, served on rice. Their non-Chinese customers miscalled it Chop Suey and loved it. One American addition is the deep fried noodles that make a nice crunchy garnish.
In the wheat growing regions of Northern China, noodles may be boiled or steamed or served in soup or stir fried in oil (Chow Mein) or stir fried with a stock (Lo Mein) or fried into a pancake or served cold with fresh garden vegetables in a sweet sour stock as a summer cooler or deep fried as a ″bird's nest” or as a crunchy topping or … but I go on.
Pizza is another American innovation (or not, as one prefers) only reminiscent of the bread, herbs and cheese of Roma. Consider a recipe for Neapolitan Fried Pizza ascribed to Sophia Loren which I clipped from a feuilleton some forty or more years ago.
Neapolitan Fried Pizza Sophia Loren
Proof 1 tablespoon of yeast in ¼ cup lukewarm water.
Mix with 5 cups flour and 1 cup, or more if needed, of water .
Knead and let rise about 30 minutes.
Saute 6 minced cloves of garlic in ¼ cup of olive oil.
Puree 3 pounds of Italian Tomatoes.
Add to garlic with fresh basil.
Cook over high heat for 15 minutes.
Form dough into 6” rounds. Fry in olive oil.
Spread with sauce and cheese., fold in half.
Not exactly your B'way slice with the cheesy top lost in a swamp of red yellow oil. First I had was in 1962 when a window to the street served a four inch slice from a 20” pie on a paper napkin for just 15¢. Bread and cheese with flavored oil. Yum.
Today pizza is a proud exemplar of a truly global dish with bells and whistles, from ultra-super-thin crust to Chicago-Sicilian-drown-your-enemies-in-a-bathtub deep dish, with added refinements in every region. Even I, here at Dum Luk's, once made a double decker pizza as a way to make stuffed crust even more ... Stuffed. Think of it: A crisp crust on the bottom covered in a meaty sauce and cheese under a softer layer of bread covered in a meaty sauce with cheese. That's a jawbreaker of pizza goodness about 2” thick. Well ... I always admitted to being a gourmand. That's a politer (to porcines) way to say pig.
Then there is macaroni cheese, which I consider one of the finer achievements of gorp. My extensive experience was mostly gained as a means of feeding The Kid™ and utilizing the five pound block of government cheddar and pony keg of powdered milk which came our way once a month from a more generous (to the dairy industry) surplus food program soon to be stopped by a rogue regime in the eighties. To this day The Kid™ believes, with a goodly portion of truth on her side, that the best dinners begin by sautéing a mess of onions. Meanwhile boil some pasta in another pot. Add meat, if available, to the onions. A can of tuna fish can substitute or skip it for a veggie delight (lactose tolerant). Add garlic, celery, bell peppers, mushrooms, carrots, green beans, peas, cauliflower, broccoli, scallions, Lima beans, corn, leeks, or whatever takes your fancy or you happen to have. Add more. Add less. Cook's choice. Add herbs, cook's choice: maybe celery seed, oregano, thyme; or celery seed, basil, bay leaf (crunch it up); or fennel, ginger and allspice. Salt. Pepper. To make your sauce, in the pot stir in a tablespoon or two of flour and some dry mustard to make a roux with the fat (butter, olive oil, or both) in the pan. Add powdered milk, if using. Stir to spread the dry stuff in a thin layer to avoid clumps. Add stock – Milk, water, chicken, beef, mushroom, veggie-- what do you want it to taste like? Let this simmer for a quarter of an hour or so. Time depends on how you like your veg. Stir it now and then to keep it dancing. By now it should be a bit thick – but not a lot. Add a pound or so of cheese diced fine or grated as you have the patience for. Stir to mix and melt the cheese. Add the cooked pasta, stir some more and serve. The Kid™ still adores this meal—which we used to have every Tuesday night for half a dozen years — and was taking a college nutrition course before she tumbled that I was slipping her the vegetables.
Why every Tuesday? That was the day Diana was scheduled to work the swing shift at the library and so it was just The Kid™ and me and maybe Del (who thought I was stingy with the cheese.) Diana took her vegetables in a less cheesy manner. She prefers her mac cheese as Noodles Jefferson.
Old Tom was an inventor and promoter. That way he had with words! While President he expended much personal energy on ways to expand the products of American Agriculture. His sojourn in Paris broadened his culinary horizons. He thought American farmers – particularly in Virginia and the Carolinas – could make a good thing out of sesame seeds, particularly the oil. Among many other foreign blandishments the lobbyists eager for American trade foisted on this simple country boy was some pasta and a wheel of Parmesan cheese.
This led to Noodles Jefferson. Cook pasta. Mix with melted butter and grated Parmesan. Season with salt and pepper. Serve. Elegant and simple at once.
One of The Kid's™ good friends was beyond finicky. Her idea of macaroni cheese was tres tres nouvelle cuisine. I fetched her with a simple bowl of buttered orzo flecked with a few cut leaves of Italian parsley.
On line most any good recipe site will provide dozens of variations on this essential comfort food. There does seem to be a bit of a continuo in the noodle. Elbows. Elbows? Well. I have nothing against elbows. I have a great tuna casserole from the fifties that uses them. But what about Rotelle? Or Radiatori? Del always preferred Rotini for there superior sauce conveying areas. But there's also gemeli and bowties and farfalle and conchiglie – aka shells (I like little ones for pasta salads and The Kid™ likes big un's. So there.) Well here's a list. Here's a bigger one.
So, Gorp = meat (protein, animal or vegetable) + veg (vitamins & minerals) and flour(thickener, carb) + water (stock, milk, wine)?
That's neat phony math, but way to limiting to be gorp.
This is just one byway of one pot meals. There are all kinds of soups and stews. There are salads. There are sausages. There are hamburgers, the least of which are merely ground beef formed into a patty. There are breads.
Breads merit a completely different post. But consider that, not just one or two, but whole libraries of books have been written on ways to mix flour and water, with or without a leaven, to obtain nourishment. Something that basic/fanciful, simple/complex and quick/slow that its variations keep us happy all our lives long if only we try; That's gorp
And that's whats for dinner.
--ml
That said, if I really value being seen as an individual first, rather than my gender, size, race, then I must accept that other women are also free to make choices about the way they lead their lives as well. More importantly, I must actively work to ensure their ability to make choices I might not personally make is free of sexist, transphobic, classist, ableist, homophobic, racist and sizeist oppression. After all, they are my sisters – regardless of whether or not my own lived experiences mirror theirs or I agree with their life choices.
Applies to men as well though that is off topic for yet another excellent Snarkey's Machine post.
--ml
Western Civilization would not have been possible without alcohol. The only way you can have a dense population is if you can find way of making your water safe to drink. Europeans managed this through beer and wine. This is proven through evolution. In most of the non-European world, only about half of the population is born with the enzymes to digest alcohol. In Europe the proportion is 90 percent. Those without the enzymes rarely made it to adulthood and have been slowly bred out of the population.
In Asia, civilization was possible because they developed hot beverages and had lots of spices with antiseptic properties. There, evolution favored those who like spicy food. When Muslim civilization gave up wine drinking, they adopted tea as a replacement.
Indeed. The Egyptians loved their beer, as did the Sumerians. The Greeks, of course, created wine snobbery. But the point of the King's College lecturer is not so much that alcohol was necessary as much that it was the principal cause. In proof of the hypothesis one might hope to find some attempt at brewing which predates agriculture. When I consider there has to be a formidable set of tools created. You have to have grain better than wild grass. You have to master a fair bit of chemistry to convert the grain into something we have a chance of digesting; and you have to invent a rather extensive tool set from clay pots to hammers, sickles (da, comrade!) and, oh just a minor point, fire control as well as making. Phew. I'm tired just thinking about it. --ml
The day is clear, bright and warm. The corn season is upon us. What better than a barbecued chicken breast with a sweet golden ear and a bit of greens? Earle introduced me to roast corn on the cob. For years I thought he invented the process as I encountered few who had heard of it. But, of course, it is a method probably as old as the domestication of sweet corn, a hybrid derived from the more starchy field corn, by the residents of the western hemisphere prior to the end of the fifteenth century. The process: You need a good bed of coals, glowing but not flaming. A wood fire on a beach or meadow, a charcoal grill in the backyard. Take each ear, picked that day, and trim the silk and any loose leaves from the ear. As soon as corn is picked its sugar begins to turn into starch. This used to be a serious problem. Todays hybrids slow the process down considerably. Leave the tight leaves and the stem at one end intact. If the ears were in the sun for very long, soak them in cool water for half a minute. This will ensure that the ear is moist enough to steam cook the kernels. Lay the corn on the coals. Turn several times until the outer leaves are blackened all around from the middle to near each end. Meanwhile melt some butter in a small pan, like a Turkish coffee maker. To eat: Pull the leaves from the tassel end back to the stem. This makes a cool handle to hold the ear while revealing all the kernels which remain hot. Use a disposable one inch bristle paint brush to paint melted butter on the corn. After that you can take your choice of typewriter or roller style ingestion. The kernels vary from a deep gold to caramel (light to dark) with maybe a few burned. Except for the latter all are delicious. But the caramelized corn sugar is the best, and what makes this method unique. If you can't cook outside Earle came up with a near approximation roasted in the oven. Shuck the ear completely and place it on a square of aluminum foil. Season with salt and pepper and generous dabs of butter. Roll up in the foil and set each ear in a 4000 oven for 20 minutes, or so. Turn about half way through.
The trick to barbecued chicken is one of technique more than sauce, I think. Every town has one or more do-good clubs that raise funds through a mass meal, or 'feed'. There are crab feeds, spaghetti feeds, Chile suppers, pancake breakfasts, salmon roasts, Burgoos and Perloos, clam bakes and fish fries, ox and pig roasts, and, of course, chicken barbecues. As I write the names the map of the U.S. unfolds before my mind's eye, with each name taking me to a different region at a different season. Once I had the pleasure of visiting a chicken do in central Washington, Ephratra or Moses' Lake way. While my companions tended to the business that brought us to town, I whiled away the time watching a couple of old timers cook chicken in a large outdoor pit barbecue. This consisted of two parallel brick walls about counter height (maybe forty inches), ten or twelve feet long and not more than three feet apart. A wood fire is built in this. It can be fed from either end by means of a long metal tool shaped like a hoe. When it produces a steady, moderate, heat square grates of stout expanded metal attached to lengths of angle iron that extend past the grate to form handles on both sides are laid across the pit. How many of these depends on the rush. Just one early. Four or more at noon or supper time. Two, maybe, in between. The chicken pieces, taken from the pans in which they marinated, are arranged on this close together, but not touching. As soon as the rack is full it is painted with sauce. Another rack is placed on top. Two cooks grasp the handles and squeeze them tight. Both racks, as one, are rotated 1800 . This technique is either brilliant or a complete disaster. It depends on the skill, coordination and dumb luck of the cooks. Once the chicken is successfully turned the pieces are painted with sauce again and left alone for a short time, maybe five minutes? Then the process repeats. The only point of this for you, poised as you must be at your backyard Weber, or hibachi or what have you, is that the fire is not too hot and the chicken is basted with sauce and turned frequently. When you achieve an even bronze overcast with the sauce's red (or ...?) you have achieved perfection. In the photo above I achieved 'looks awful but tastes ok' because I turned my back on the grill, briefly, just as a large amount of rendered schmaltz dropped onto the coals to feed a conflagration that charred the skin without advancing the cooking very much. oh. well. Keep a spritz bottle of water handy to put out flames and cool over exuberant coals. Every backyard chef his own fed. (ha! Take that, Greenspan.)
So what about the sauce? Well, what about it? There are so many that you can dabble all you like or pick a favorite or mix and match to suit your taste, the occasion, or your rich uncle. A better question is: What is a sauce? The primary purpose of the sauce is threefold. The most important is to seal the meat so it stays moist. Oil or fat does this. So every sauce, including the one you are just about to invent, begins with butter or olive oil or both or some other fat or oil. The other purposes of sauce are flavor and appearance. For that you have vinegars and commercial preparations like soy sauce, Louisiana hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce and so forth. Judicious admixtures please some palettes and offend others. Such is life. To complete the myrmidons of flavor there are gardens full of herbs and tropic forests filled with spices. This is not to mention the wondrous capsicum family of peppers, sliding down the Scoville scale from bell to Anaheims to Anchos, jalapeño to chipotle.
Or the delicious ginger root.
Not to mention Garlic and the rest of the onion clan.
Finally there is the flavorful vehicle: tomatoes or apples. See "Dum Luk's Sauce" for more discussion. Grape and olive and tamarinds and others I wot not of also enter into this.
What ever co-mingling of the above you deem appropriate may or may not look appetizing. It doesn't have to. The appearance factor enters in the presentation to the diner. If it looks good after patient cheffing then you are home free on this score. Only the commercial concoctions need resort to colors and thickeners. They have to appeal to shoppers.
In short, 'sauce' is a life study all to itself. And I haven't even considered rubs and brines and pickles and salt encasing and Pepper coating and throwing the dam thing in the septic tank for aging. The last is NOT recommended. Though I have observed a Gypsy pig roast in which the secret ingredient was a generous application of Gypsy urine supplied fresh from the sources. I was not enough of a Gadjo to try it. --ml tags:Dum Luks Ordinary, corn, chicken, sauce
So the summer's visitors -- both small and big people -- have come and gone. The swelter the week before led The Kidtm and I to purchase an abundance of lemons for to make lemonade and add to iced tea and fish and water and just 'cause. Then the typhoon bowled in with the guests bob-a-rag tagging along. Cold and wet -- not really lemon weather. So some are left.
To make lemonade:
Grate the zest from one, or more, lemons. Squeeze the juice from three, or more, lemons into a measuring glass. Pour into a sauce pan and heat. Add the same quantity of sugar -- or, to suit the lemons or your taste, more or less. When the sugar has dissolved add the grated peel (of course to taste).
Here is a fork:
If you are making a pitcher of lemonade: add as much water as lemon juice and pour the result into a suitable pitcher filled with ice. Kid test the result and adjust accordingly.
Else:
Bottle the syrup for cooling and refrigeration. Make the lemonade by the glass. Dilute with a soda siphon. Add a shot of vodka or Gin for the big people. The Kidtm likes flavored vodkas and has tried several with reported mixed results. Some are good. Others not so much. Your taste will be your guide.
But there are those three lemons left in the picture. Ah!
Lemon Cake Pudding
Set oven to 3500f. and butter a 2 quart casserole. Mix a cup of sugar, a half cup of flour, with a half teaspoon of baking powder. Separate 3 eggs and beat the whites stiff. Beat in, a spoonful at a time, a half cup of sugar. Reserve. Without cleaning, use the same beaters to beat the yolks light. Add the grated peel of a lemon, a half cup of lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of melted salted butter, and a cup and a half of cream or milk. Stir into the flour mixture and beat until smooth. Now fold in the egg whites thoroughly. Pour into casserole and bake for 45 minutes in a pan filled with a half inch of water. Now the hard part. Chill at least one hour.
--This is a family favorite of Diana's but a milder version appears in Fannie Farmer's tenth edition as "Baked Lemon Pudding".
Chemistry works the magic of floating a cake on top of a pudding out of the unified batter you put in the oven. People make the magic of disappearing it almost at once. --ml tags:Dum Luks Ordinary, lemons
Rhubarb, strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, peach, pear and plum: the summer pies arrive! The picture is of my tart pie apple tree whose luscious tee-totally lip-puckeringly sour apples start falling off the tree en masse about the second week of July. I don't call them "ripe" so much as "ready". So I pick them up and I pick them from and I make a batch of my very own Dum Luk's Sauce (Follow link to find out how) and I make an apple pie. Like this:
Pastry is the reaction of flour and fat to heat. Gluten is a valuable ingredient in flour if you are making bread. Well developed gluten encloses gases released by the yeast as bread rises. Without the gluten the dough would pass the gases, so to speak, and collapse. But in pastry well developed gluten makes the crust as tough as shoe leather. Work quickly and lightly when mixing and rolling pastry. Roll the dough in one direction only to give the gluten as small a work out as possible. Use pastry flour or flour that is low in gluten (a soft wheat, not a hard wheat) and free of the most glutenous parts of the wheat grain. Keep making it and before very long you will receive accolades for your pies. Here's my current implementation. It freezes well for other times of the year. The lard does make a difference to the flakiness of the crust, while butter provides flavor. There are many other fats that work as any basic cookbook will show.
Pie Pastry Yield: 3 Pies -ml- Lard to make it flaky, Butter to make it tasty.
1/2 cup lard 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 cup butter 2 tbl ice water, approx. 21/2 cups flour
Cut lard and butter into flour and salt until the texture of coarse meal. Add just enough ice water to gather the pastry in a ball. Chill. Cut in thirds. Roll one third out for each crust. Prick all over the bottom for a crisp pastry. This makes pastry for a one crust pumpkin and a two crust mince.
Any basic cookbook will provide several variations on the idea of flour, fat, liquid to make a crust. Once I met a cook who insisted that bisquick made the only acceptable pie crust. Maybe so. But I call that cobbler, not pie. You may call that a distinction without a difference if you so desire.
But pastry is not quite half a pie. Filling is the balance. Filling is fruit and sugar and flavorings and thickeners. Meat, vegetable, fish and fowl fillings are a different story for another time as are nut pies. Whatever your fruit, rinse and drain it. This should leave enough moisture for most ripe fruits. Slice if needful and put enough in a bowl. Add as little sugar as needed. Learn to appreciate the tart-sweet spectrum. It will broaden life's pleasures. Add such flavorings as fit: lemon for a sweet apple or berry, nutmeg is always good. Try anise with apples as well as the more usual cinnamon and cloves. Cardamom intrigues. Flour thickens best if added here and stirred with the fruit to spread it around. Added separately it tends to clump and miss the juice. Instant tapioca also works. With the filling ready, roll out the pastry to line the pie plate. Again it is liberty hall to make any shape from a shallow tart with fluted edges to a square deep dish. Pour in the filling with any juice that 'sweat' from the fruit. Top or not as you prefer with pastry lattices, or relief sculptures, or nubbly vistas of brown sugar, flour, and nuts adhered with butter. Bake -- on a drip tray to save the mess in a moderately hot oven about 4000f. for 25 minutes or as long as it takes. Stick a fork or toothpick in a visible piece of fruit to test for doneness. The juice should bubble and look glossy thick. The pastry should be brown. Serve it with sharp white cheddar or fresh churned ice cream. Down it in milk or cream or whipped or just a modest continent of sour cream. All right, yogurt if you wish. Have a slice for breakfast to empty the plate for the dishwasher. Then there's peach pie ... for another time. --ml tags:Dum Luks Ordinary, summer pies
The Kidtm said: "Ooohhh! Look!" and presented a side of wild king salmon. Into the cart it went. This time I tried a new method. Lay the fillet skin side down on a large sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil. Dot with butter. Cover closely with fresh mint leaves. Top that with a half pint of raspberries and a quarter of a cup of cream. Slice up a lemon or two for the only trickle down that works on the topmost layer. Fold the foil around the fish crimping the edges to seal and place over a charcoal fire to poach about 20 minutes. No reason you couldn't do it in the oven, or in a fish poacher.
We served it with homemade French fries using my favorite red potatoes, though the Kidtm prefers Yukon golds. She made a sautè of mixed summer squash and a bouquet garni from the herb patch. She left out the shallots which would have improved a good dish. Then she made her famous tartar sauce which is a base of yogurt and sour cream with a healthy dab of mayonnaise and Dill relish -- a local product from a neighborhood farm stand. Seasonings include dill, garlic, cayenne, celery seed, what ever seems worth trying. McGear who is a gallant trencherman as well as a chef of repute, brought a modified version of a Rio Star Grapefruit Pie from a recipe he found at the Texas Citrus Exchange site. (Scroll down). This is grapefuit in strawberry jello in a short pie shell topped with whipped cream. Very easy to eat! We finished the evening playing one of the funniest rounds of Uno I have ever experienced. Enjoy the local fruits of your season! --ml tags:Dum Luks Ordinary, salmon
The Hunter-gatherer life presents a daily problem: Where is the next mouthful to come from? This frivolous question tended to blot out all thoughts about matters of import such as the nature of God, or why did the sun shine, or why did some colors go together while others gave you the absolute hab-dabs. These sorts of inquiries were left for postprandial discussion groups. Where they belonged.[Lest anyone think this is too silly, consider that this pretty is 35,000 years old] If it happened that a large animal was caught, any part of it not eaten right then would call in the scavengers and other competition. If they were beaten off then the carcass promptly rotted. That was okay up to a point because the wise knew where to find the herbs that covered the taste. But after a point there was no keeping the meat down. There were a couple of things you might do. Pull the meat apart into thin strings and hang them in the sun, or over a slow fire (if you happened to have one) until they turned dark and dry and brittle. This made for interesting chewing. A better trick was to pound it to crumbs and mix with almost as much fat and add in fruit and nuts. This made pemmican and kept quite satisfactorily. With a few greens the nutrition was good too. Another option was to salt the meat. With a lot of salt. That meant spending time at the sea shore drying water to claim the salt. Inland there were natural salt outcroppings, as well. A third possibility involved stewing the meat in its own juice and storing it in skin bags well coated, particularly at the seams, with fat. With a layer of fat at the top to complete the seal, damaging air was kept out. Salt was still useful, but a lot less. But one sees that the real problem is fire. Fire is not readily portable. Alchemists might acclaim it a near universal solvent if they looked in it's direction. Our intrepid neolithic chemists were discovering the relationship of air (oxygen) and both animal meat and fire. Too much destroyed. Only a little preserved. (For more on cooking with fire see A Proper Fire.) The major hurdle was starting a fire. Take away the fuel or let it be consumed and the fire would stop. To keep one going meant almost constant attention. How did you either preserve or start a fire while on the move? How did you start the fires at home if every fire in the village was out? Rubbing sticks together? Flint and steel? Oops -- no steel for a long time yet. How about stone on stone? (Ever try these boy scout tricks? They are not easy. They are not easy even if you have the 'modern' wherewithal of the eighteenth century. See Flint and Steel and Flint and Steel Fire Lighting Tips for an authoritative discussion of the problems and solution.) These hunter-gatherer daily dilemmas were transmuted with settlement and adoption of a grain based diet. Villages soon developed the rudimentary concepts of Vestal Virgins to tend the flame that acted as the central repository for all home fires. Meat could be eaten raw. Grain must be cooked to provide any nutrition for humans at all. So fire became a near neighbor. Moving in with fire was not done by any with a survival instinct. But a fire in the yard was acceptable. A large, smooth rock could make a griddle to fry some flour and water paste to make crackers, or matzos. Here I am at a major subject branch. Let us leave the natural history of wild yeast for another post, and attempt to resume the present topic. You hadn't noticed there was one? Pay closer attention then. Strewth. The major innovation at this point was the enclosure of fire within a stone or brick shell which concentrated the heat. The result was usually a beehive oven in the yard. With variations, as in Sumer about 2900 BCE:
Bread (Sumerian, ninda; Akkadian, akalu) must have been made, at least in some cases, from leavened dough. There are no direct descriptions, but allusions to its bulky size and to leaving the dough overnight to rest seem to be indications of fermentation. One may assume, however, that in most cases the bread was made from unleavened dough shaped into flat, round loaves, similar to the present-day Near Eastern khubuz. This bread was baked in a peculiar, ubiquitous type of oven called an öurin (Sumerian) or tinûru (Akkadian). It was a clay implement of cylindrical shape, tapering to a conical form in its upper part and with a side opening at its base. The whole was between 3 and 4 feet high. Once the oven was sufficiently heated, the flat, unleavened loaves were plastered to the side for baking. Salaries of the workers were often paid in bread. Roasted barley was sold in the streets and at the marketplace.
In the middle East there wasn't much push to bring the oven inside. On the wind swept loess of ancient China it was more interesting to have the heat inside the house. Particularly in winter when the well to do built ovens under the sleeping platform , called a 'kang', which made Morpheus so cozy.
Already from the Chinese Qin Dynasty (221 BC–206/207 BC), clay stoves that enclosed the fire completely are known, and a similar design known as kamado (かまど) appeared in the Kofun period (3rd–6th century) in Japan. These stoves were fired by wood or charcoal through a hole in the front. In both designs, pots were placed over or hung into holes at the top of the knee-high construction. Raised kamados were developed in Japan during the Edo period (1603–1867).
The garden's mint is taking over the neighboring town. They do not approve. Horror movies -- The Mint That Ate Burlington -- are for silver screens, not life in Pleasantville. So I pulled a dozen stalks up by their rhizomes. From this I plucked a cup and a half (or so) of prime leaves, washed them and chopped them fine.
In a suitable pot I set a quart of mild rice vinegar to heat. When it was just smiling -- 1900f. or so -- I added 2 cups of sugar and stirred. The resident taste tester rejected that mix, so I added a third cup to the brew. This was approved.
When the sugar was completely dissolved I added the mint leaves and let them steep. After twenty minutes or so it was ready to bottle. I used a couple of 750ml Malt bottles with nice cork tops. These live in the refrigerator, though there is so much acid they probably don't need to, to await the next dish of lamb the cook sallies forth. --ml tag:Dum Luks Ordinary
About ten to twelve thousand years ago the first major act of piracy occurred among the human species: The invention of agriculture.
Prior to that time we lived in small groups, no more than 50 individuals of mixed generations, by hunting and gathering. The Wikipedia article on "Hunter-gatherer" describes one attendee's contribution to the 1966 "Man the Hunter" conference thusly:
Marshall Sahlins presented a paper entitled, "Notes on the Original Affluent Society," in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers living lives "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," as Thomas Hobbes had put it in 1651. According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from the idea that they are satisfied with very little in the material sense. This, he said, constituted a Zen economy.
Hunter-gathering requires a certain skill set which includes stone sculpture, zoology, physics, geometry and botany. It also requires a certain range: an area which provides sufficient plants and animals to feed the group. Equality is a requisite for the teamwork needed to compensate for the survival skills of the prey, and outwit the competition (lions, tigers and bears, et al.) It also enforces an economic outlook which confines the concept of property to that which one makes, and can carry. The notion of owning land is dismissed as the patent absurdity it is; a complete mismatch of time scales. This way of life is no idyll. It takes knowledge and skills absent in most of us today. It is not an overly generous life style. So the weak and sickly do not last. And the total number of people per acre is so scant as to be risible in our age of the world. OTOH crowding might mean no more than another group barely in sight after a day's walk. Compare this life to a career working a blast furnace and it comes out on top for ease, pleasure and longevity. If you survived the first several years of life, when nature was most assiduous in pruning, you could look forward to most of your three score and ten -- barring accidents. I submit that a blast furnace is far more likely to provide some than a savanna or wood. Few groups were so blessed (cursed?) as to find one range generous enough to permit settling. One such region was my own, the Pacific North West of North America in which a temperate climate combined with fertile forests by an ocean embayed, with many islands, to provide ample provender the year 'round. To illustrate the point the coastal trading language. contained a word which meant "He went East over the mountains to live on the desert." There was also a word that meant "He went crazy." It was the same word.
After settling a curious result followed: equality gave way to hierarchy. Loose notions of property tightened until acquisition became more important that use. This was viewed with spiritual alarm. The Potlatch, in which the point of the party was to gift the attendees with all one's possessions, freed one's spirit to re-experience the purity of the nomadic hunter-gatherer. This state was fleeting. It was never long before a neighbor felt the need for a spiritual cleansing and issued his invitations. It was a carousel of aggressive generosity.
One such experience may have corrupted a farmer into the first great Pirate. Some how he acquired enough means to support a modest crew of bully boy ruffian-wannabes. These he grandly called his "Army". He spent a fair effort talking up 'the present danger' which he assured everyone his army would protect them from. Of course he wouldn't object to a little help. Donations of food were useful. Of course it would make the army's job easier if everybody stayed put. See we could pile rocks and mud up to make barriers -- call them 'walls -- we can all hide behind them if another army comes by looking for trouble. Or we can go out looking for trouble. Won't that be fun? Of course, we'd need a bigger army, which would need more food, which means we have to do something about finding new things to eat. How about that grass? Isn't it great? Good exercise for the teeth and jaws! Slimming, too. That's quite a roll of antelope fat you have there. Well, don't get tetchy! Of course you can live on grain. Lets see, maybe if we smash it up with these stones it won't take so long to chew. I soak mine in water. Overnight usually. (It tastes funny if you leave it more than a week. Kinda fun, though.) Well, try heating it up. With a hot rock of course. Just drop it in 'til it boils. Ya'know, it smokes and bubbles. No, it's not magic; I don't think; is it magic? Fiddlesticks (whatever they are) the rock is hot, you touch, you get hot. Same-same. The water and grain gets hot. No magic. Down the road a bit was another tribe making a go of it. they had a mess of pretty crystals they'd bring to batter with. Some times a blue stone was worth a basket of grain and sometimes it took two.Other times they was that pinched they'd give two for a half basket. Then the First Act of Piracy was committed. The Boss Man's nephew, the one who went around explaining the rules, called out a proclamation. Henceforth the Boss Man was King. That meant he owned everything as far as he could see. That's why you paid taxes, so's he wouldn't off you for ingratitude. It was the first use of the concept: "Stand and deliver!" Before one knew where the old time religion had gone the pirate chief was strutting around with a copper band around his head to keep his mighty brains contained. The army Bristled around him making everybody bow to him and call him "King". His brother was very prompt to point out all the ways the King was perfect in God's sight while almost everyone else -- especially the one's who didn't tithe to the King's Brother's Church -- stank to God, His Holy Nostrils, and generally Pissed Him Off -- which would account for why everybody's life was such a misery.
The new food supply, besides being indigestible, took a lot more work than hunter-gathering. The first weeds were discovered and the long battle with crabgrass and dandelions among the wheat stalks began. If it wasn't for all the new possessions -- split level hovels and such -- the young folk would take off into tho veldt. If it wasn't for all the new possessions and upholding the family's honor. With the new hierarchy of King, Priest and Army came artisans and craftsman who made the specialized tools of fawning, worshiping, arming and farming. At bottom were the peasants doing the plowing, the seeding, the tilling, the weeding, the guarding, the mending, the gathering, the threshing, the gleaning, the rendering (of tithes and rents and bills), the storing and the manuring. The women, when not required to work in the fields, got to tend the household chores. The kitchen garden plot. The gathering of herbs and fruits and nuts. The cooking of meals. The weaving of the baskets tight enough to hold water to boil the grain they ground into a porridge, thin or thick, or gruel depending on the state of the larder which they had to maintain and keep vermin free. Of course a basket is not exactly indestructible. Hell it's not even all that durable. So, with a splendid burst of creativity, pottery sprang upon an expectant world. But this is all back story. to be continued... --ml tags:Dum Luks Ordinary, early cooking, paleolithic cookery, economics, management, pirates, the march of technology
Just arrived back at Antioch from the Navy (circa 1969), I was lucky enough to have a former room mate and best friend who provided shelter while I sorted myself out. Life continued and I discovered my friend Richard had invested in wine. He had, I seem to remember, 39 cases of a Montrachet 1957 stored in a three sided barn adjacent to his house. Then came a storm, not quite as ferocious as that John Scalzi and the East Coast are currently experiencing, but enough to freeze the wine in the shed. That destroyed the investment value. The investment was gone, sad to say, but the wine he served for the next little while was far more delicious, prized, exquisite, and valuable then most of what I have experienced since. For that, and much, much, more, I thank him. --ml tags:Dum Luks Ordinary, John Scalzi
Poke holes in the skin to avoid steam build up exploding the potato (honest-- not a terrorist weapon) all over your oven unless you like cleaning the oven.
Oven roast potatoes are peeled, thereby avoiding steam build up and placed in boiling water for a few minutes (3 to five) then drained. Then add oil, salt and pepper, and swish them around and place on the rack beside the roast. The oil plus the softened outer layer of potato turns crisp and brown and tasty.
Wrap potatoes in foil with a bit of butter to throw on the barbie or camp fire.
Best is Angelo Pellegrini's recipe for adult fries: Mix cut potatoes with salt, pepper, fresh rosemary and olive oil. When well covered pour into an oven proof dish and bake at 400 degrees f. for about 40 minutes. Turn about half way through. All your problems will disappear. --ml Cross posted to Archy's comments tags:Dum Luks Ordinary, potatoes
The Kidtm came home from her day at college and asked if she could have some lemony soup. This is loosely based on Avgolemono. I make it whenever any household member has a stuffed head. Of course chicken soup is where you start. Make a broth if you are in to that or just brown a few pieces of chicken in some oil or fat with an onion coarsely chopped. Today I used two legs, but a breast would also do. When the chicken is browned and the onions are translucent, add a quarter cup of garlic, two or three pieces of smashed ginger root, a half teaspoon of cayenne, a can of chicken stock and two cans of water. If you have hot peppers add them. Also chop and add a rib of celery, a carrot, a bit of red and/or green pepper, and whatever else looks good for the pot. Some cauliflower and broccoli went into mine today with a couple of mushrooms. After the stock begins to simmer add a half cup of rice or orzo or barley. When that is cooked add a lemon. You can add it as grated rind and juice or as sliced whole lemon. When you are almost ready to serve add any leafy greens you might have: cilantro or parsley or watercress or cabbage or mustard greens etc. You can also add an egg by mixing it in a bowl with a cup of hot stock and while still stirring pouring that into the pot. Or you can pour a lightly beaten egg into the hot soup while stirring to make an egg drop soup effect. What goes into this soup depends on what is in the cupboard, not a particular recipe. Add herbs as you like. The main thing about it is that the spicing is meant to blow the top of the sickies head off so that the mucous drains. You know you have it about right when the sickie can just taste the garlic and peppers or cayenne, while it is as spicy hot as the well ones can stand. Tell them it is insurance. --ml tags:Dum Luks Ordinary, chicken soup
Every year a local group throws a pancake breakfast to raise money for their good purposes. One in particular, in an area with lots of Scandahoovians and their descendents, features Swedish pancakes. One year we decided to attend to see what these were like. They were very good, worth the wait which was more than the money because lots of people came. You know Swedish pancakes? Light, eggy, served with berry jam and sour cream. They are somewhere in the vicinity of crepes and blini.(If the links disappear search 'Swedish Pancakes' on the Food Network) I mentioned our jaunt to Del who gave voice: "Oh, yes. They are quite tasty and the men have so much fun playing chef while the women organize them. But they aren't real Swedish pancakes. They are something you might find in Aunt Agatha's Tea Shoppe in Stockholm, But real Swedes would laugh it back to the kitchen." Did I mention that Del was half German and half Sicilian? So of course he knew. He gave me the following recipe which, I cheerfully admit, makes a wonderful pancake -- particularly if you plan to split a cord or three of firewood that day.
Real Swedish Pancakes Del
Mix 4 cups rolled oats, 1 cup flour, 1/4cup sugar, 2 teaspoons soda, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Add 4 beaten eggs, 4 cups buttermilk, 1/2 cup melted butter, 2 teaspoons vanilla. Stir. Let stand 45 minutes to thicken.
Do NOT add more liquid.
Fry on griddle by spoonfuls.
The warning is apt. The temptation to dilute -- while great -- must be resisted. I have kept the batter overnight in the fridge and for as much as a week without apparent ill effect. That's strange considering that the baking powder and soda, once wet, should loose their leavening power in less than a day. Also this recipe scales nicely. Divide the major quantities by four and the leaven and vanilla by half for a modest breakfast for four or six. At The Kid'stmrequest I occasionally use a waffle iron instead of a griddle. Waffles: Better butter and syrup traps. --ml tags:Dum Luks Ordinary, Del Stories, breakfast
Seville Oranges arrived in the local market last week. They usually ripen at the end of January or early February in the US Southwest. Some folks (Tempe residents, for instance) can find them on their streets ready to pick from the ornamentals in the median. Up here in the left hand corner we have the honor of supporting the sellers and growers with cash. Which I am happy to do to get some good marmalade for the rest of the year. Dorothy always had James Keeler's Dundee Marmalade in its ceramic pots with a paper hoop top. Made handsome drink containers and pencil jars when the last golden chunk of orange peel and sugar was scraped from the bottom. The classic tale of marmalades origin is that a "canny" Glaswegian ship skipper overreached himself by buying up a cargo of oranges from Seville dirt cheap. Since he took his vitamins strictly in the form of single malt, he didn't realize how bitter his cargo was. Naturally, in his distress, he turned to his wife for assistance. Being a grocer's daughter she recognized the opportunity and invented marmalade on the instant. Likely that's marketer's blarney. But there is a strong connection of marmalade to Scotland. To make a preserve of bitter citrus is not uncommon if you think of the various chutney's from India or the sour plum jam so highly prized in Japan. The recipe I take off from is to be found in Jennifer Brennan's: Curries and Bugles: A Memoir and Cook Book of the British Raj (try the usual suspects for used or new copies), which combines many fine Anglo-Indian recipes with memories of growing up in India in the late forties. There it betrays its Scot's roots in it's title: Granny Whitburn's Marmalade. I call mine Single Malt Marmalade. To begin, you'll need about two and a quarter pounds of Sevilles, about six or seven, a lemon, some sugar and a decent single malt. For my taste the darker, peatier and smokier the better. Pity I can't afford Laphroaig. Dalmore's nice and Lismore works with the advantage of fitting the budget. But that is just me. The first step in the process is to sharpen your knives. If you keep on top of them, that only means a whet or six to the paring knife. For more extensive operations go here, and here and then take your pluck in one hand and plunge in. On your cutting board lay a square (better then a foot square} of cheese cloth. Remove the zest from the Sevilles and Lemon. I had a half grapefruit rind left from breakfast so in it went. Zest is the outer skin which contains the color. When it turns white and soft its called pith. You can make the zest what you will. Line it up in military squares and chop it with a ruler. I do think using a micrometer in the kitchen is a bit absurd. Or cut it higgledy-piggley as you see here that I prefer. Quarter the fruit and pull the pith off the meat. Over the stock pot or jam kettle cut the quarter half through from the center and squeeze from either end to get the pips to gather in your fingers. These and the pith go onto the cheese cloth.The sharp knife makes this whole process go faster which is nice as at this point. If you have any cuts around your cuticles you will notice the intense impact of the acidic citrus juice on your digits. Now the fruit and zest are in the pot and the pith and pips are on the cheese cloth, right? That's okay. Pick the pith out of the pot and put it on the cloth. Keep going until all the fruit has been prepared. Now gather the corners of your cheese cloth around the pith and pips and tie it up like a hobo's bindle, ready for the stick. add it and a gallon of water to the pot and bring it to a boil. Let it sit there smiling away for a good three hours. Watch it until you are sure it won't boil over. Let the pot cool and put it out of your way overnight.
The next day, pull the cheese cloth bag out of the marmalade and squeeze its juice back into the pot. That juice is full of the citrus' natural pectin. Discard the pith and pips ball. Yesterday's boiling reduced the liquor to near half. Measure it into a clean pot and make it three quarts with fresh water. Add between six and eight cups of sugar. How much depends on the bitterness/ripeness of the fruit and your taste preferences. A second opinion is essential here at Dum Luk's because not every one is as found of tart/bitter as Dum Luk's himself is. (If you like the sweeter "California" style you might go to nine or even ten. But better would be to use Valencias rather than Sevilles and two lemons and a lime. The sweeter oranges need less sugar to balance them.) Set the pot at about half speed to bring it slowly up to almost a boil to caramelize the sugar and turn the juice a rich dark golden brown. This takes an hour and a half or thereabouts. While waiting you play find the pips. They usually are the round things floating next to the square cut peel pieces. Cheer up even though you know you found them all Aunt Tilly will extract one from her plate at the all important breakfast. Towards the end of that get about eight twelve ounce jars, or equivalent, a funnel and a ladle ready to sterilize. When the marmalade is dark enough to suit you, turn the heat up full to quickly raise the temperature to a jelly stage -- 2200f. at sea level. I keep a couple of steel ice cream dishes in the freezer for jam testing. Put a half teaspoonful of juice in the bowl and tip it so the juice cools rapidly. If it doesn't respond to gravity when you tip it upside down, beyond a yearning bulge in the direction of the floor, then its ready to jar and seal. OOOPS! Greenman Tim points out I skipped a step. Before you jar... Remove from the heat. Add 3 tablespoons of single malt. Re heat for 1 minute. Let sit for fifteen minutes. Then jar. You can expect about 72 ounces. More than that makes a topping for ice cream (or fresh snow if you have any.) Less than that heads in the direction of juggler's balls. Now to make some bread ... --ml tags:Dum Luks Ordinary, marmalade
